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> The founders themselves would have told the modern Supreme Court that it's bonkers. > expected large swathes of it to be amended and replaced Would they hav

> The founders themselves would have told the modern Supreme Court that it's bonkers. > expected large swathes of it to be amended and replaced Would they have? There exists a mechanism to amend the Constitution, and it seems reasonable to me that the Supreme Court would insist on textual originalism until the text is amended through that legal process.

TylerE 3y ago
Here's Thomas Jefferson writing to James Madison in the early 1790s: "The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water… (But) between society and society, or generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation to another… On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation… Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right." That's one founding father to another. Funny how the "originalists" never bring this quote up. It's one founding father, later our 3rd president, writing to another founder who would later be our 4th. Edit: Here's the full letter, and it's actually from late 1789: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-0248 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-024...
- deleted 3y ago
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- junofan 3y ago
  I’d read Madison’s reply. Everyone knows Jefferson talked a lot of shit. The other founders were used to him. This is him getting emotional in Paris during the French Revolution. He thought the proto-Cult of Reason people were a bunch of crackpots and was worried the same thing was going to happen here.
- refurb 3y ago
  Originalists never said the Constitution can't be changed, it can and has. Originalists say that if you want to change the Constitution, then change it, don't try and interpret it in a different way just to fit what you want. That's subverting the process itself.

TylerE 3y ago

Here's Thomas Jefferson writing to James Madison in the early 1790s: "The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water… (But) between society and society, or generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation to another… On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation… Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right." That's one founding father to another. Funny how the "originalists" never bring this quote up. It's one founding father, later our 3rd president, writing to another founder who would later be our 4th. Edit: Here's the full letter, and it's actually from late 1789: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-0248 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-024...

deleted 3y ago
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junofan 3y ago
I’d read Madison’s reply. Everyone knows Jefferson talked a lot of shit. The other founders were used to him. This is him getting emotional in Paris during the French Revolution. He thought the proto-Cult of Reason people were a bunch of crackpots and was worried the same thing was going to happen here.
refurb 3y ago
Originalists never said the Constitution can't be changed, it can and has. Originalists say that if you want to change the Constitution, then change it, don't try and interpret it in a different way just to fit what you want. That's subverting the process itself.